


A Few Deep Breaths

by AconitumNapellus



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Claustrophobia, Drowning, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks, The Super Colossal Affair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 14:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16518050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AconitumNapellus/pseuds/AconitumNapellus
Summary: How it was for Illya when he was dropped into the vat of plaster of paris in The Super Colossal Affair, and what it was like afterwards.Technically Gen, but only as Gen as the series, which is pretty damn not Gen. I've tried to imagine what it really would have been like, but the honest truth is that really Illya would have been cooked alive, so I've made some concessions to fantasy.TW for claustrophobia.





	A Few Deep Breaths

Like fruit from a tree, he drops. It’s so sudden. One moment he’s hanging there from the chains in that warehouse ceiling, and then he drops like a plumb weight, straight down. First his feet go in, and his body straight after. The stuff closes over his head, and he starts to react, flailing out with his arms. But his hands are still tied, and when he kicks his legs nothing happens. How do you swim in plaster of paris? That’s not an eventuality his training ever covered. His mind races. Calcium sulfate dihydrate. Is it a non Newtonian fluid? What are its properties? Regardless, he can't swim up. He can’t see and he can’t breathe, and his hands are tied, and – His feet are hard on the bottom of the vat. He can feel the solidity of the base, and all that thickening mass of plaster above him. He can’t swim up.

He sways his hands about, feeling for the side of the vat. His fingertips hit the metal and slip over ridges. He lifts his hands up, up, trying to get some purchase, but his fingers keep slipping and even when his hands reach up above the surface he can’t find the rim. There’s nothing to grip onto. There’s no way of climbing out. He sinks his hands back down.

He tries not to panic. He hears a voice in his head. _Take a few deep breaths_ . That’s his mother, trying to calm him down. He’s a child afraid of his first day in school, and his mother is crouching, trying to calm him down. _Take a few deep breaths_ , she says, straightening his collar with one hand, then smoothing over his hair. _The day will be over before you know it. You’ll have fun._ He was seven years old and he didn’t want to go to school. It was a new place with new people, and he knew it wouldn’t be fun.

_Take a few deep breaths_. He can’t do that. He’s drowning. If he opens his mouth the viscous stuff will flow in between his teeth. He’ll breathe it in eventually, because his body won’t be able to resist the urge to breathe, and when they chip him out of here they will be able to open him up to find a perfect cast of his lungs.

He paddles with his hands, and he can’t make himself move upwards. There’s nothing he can do. He tries not to panic. Mentally, he takes a few deep breaths. He tries to think how much depth of plaster there is above him. It isn’t more than a few inches. A few inches are plenty to drown in, but there’s a pen in his pocket, isn’t there? He has a ball point pen in his pocket. His hands are tied, but at least they’re tied in front of his body, and his fingers aren’t yet numb. So he pulls the pen out of his pocket, blind, everything slowed by the thickness of the liquid. It’s getting thicker, he’s sure. He tries not to panic. It’s getting thicker and warmer, and he can’t breathe, and his lungs are screaming for him to pull in – not air, but anything. His lungs don’t know anything about air. They just know about the need for his diaphragm to flex downwards and make his lungs expand.

There’s the pen. He fiddles, feeling along its length. He tries not to panic. He uses his nails to try to pull the nib and ink tube out. These things are always so fiddly. They’re fiddly when you’re sitting at a desk. How much more fiddly when you’re in a vat of plaster of paris and the air held in your lungs is rapidly running out, and you can’t see, and you’re going to die.

_Don’t panic. Don’t panic. A few deep breaths..._

There. There’s the nib and ink tube. He draws it out and lets it go, and weirdly it doesn’t drop, because the plaster is so thick. He can feel it when he moves his hand, hanging in the stuff as if he’d let go of something in space. It’s there, and then it is gone.

Now the little stopper at the other end. A little plastic stopper. He feels it, taking such care not to drop the pen, because he would never find it again. His nails prise at that little seam, and slip. He tries again, and again.

_Don’t panic. Stay calm. It’s the only way to stay alive._

Finally he manages to ease a nail into the seam, and pulls. Then the stopper is out, and now he has a tube.

_God. God_.

He angles it upwards, tilts his head back in the viscous plaster, and prays. He doesn’t believe in God. He’s never believed in God. He used to walk past repurposed churches and wonder at how people could have ever worshipped in them. He wondered how anyone could believe in something without evidence, in something so fanciful, so far away from scientific fact. How could a spirit live in the sky and control all our lives? How could he be so whimsical and cruel in his power? He used to watch his grandmother praying in front of an icon, a man’s face with gilt behind it. Then she would wrap it in cloth and hide it away, and God never appeared to make her life better. He never made her less tired or gave her more food than those who didn’t pray, and she still died in the end.

_God, God,_ he thinks.

It’s so hot. The plaster is so hot, cloying over his face, through his hair, clinging to his clothes. It is pressing heavily over every inch of him, so hot it’s unbearable. He needs air. His lungs are aching and his ears are singing and he feels as if he’s about to burst.

He tilts the tube upwards and, with a terrible force of will, instead of sucking, he blows. He can’t see, can’t tell if the end of the tube is above the surface. That thick plaster is masking over his face, heavy over his whole body. He doesn’t dare even try to open his eyes because he can already feel the heat growing around him as the chemical reaction starts the setting process. _Calcium sulfate dihydrate,_ he thinks. He doesn’t want that in his eyes. He doesn’t want to emerge alive, but blinded by chemical burns. His skin will be burnt, he is sure, but he can save his eyes. They are stinging under his eyelids and it’s a struggle not to blink, but if he keeps them closed perhaps he will save his eyes.

Instead of sucking, he blows the very last of the air in his lungs out through that tube. It’s against every instinct of his body. He has to blow the plaster out before it sets inside. That’s his last hope. So he blows – and then, at last, he sucks.

A little glob of plaster gets into his mouth, and he swallows the gritty stuff, because he can’t open his mouth to spit. But then there is air. Then there is a thin little shred of air. He can’t breathe it in fast enough. His lungs are burning. They want to jerk air in, to gulp at air like a man emerging from the depths of the sea. God, how he needs air. His rational mind fights with his desperate body, keeping his lips closed around the tube, forcing himself to slowness. He sucks steadily, and the air creeps in.

If only he could pant. If only he could breathe properly. He feels so dizzy, and he doesn’t know if it’s panic or faintness from lack of air. It’s getting in slowly. If he can stay calm it will be just enough.

The stuff is getting thicker. It’s with an awful horror that he realises he can hardly move his legs. Perhaps there can be some use in that, because when he pushes himself up on tiptoe there’s a kind of solidity emerging beneath his feet, and it helps to raise him up just a little. There’s a kind of solidity behind his back, and he can almost lean against the plaster. He has to stay raised up. He has to make sure that the end of that pen stays above the surface, so he can breathe.

It’s going to set around his body, though. That realisation creeps through him. To breathe, his lungs have to move. For his lungs to move he has to have space, even the smallest amount of space. If this stuff sets solid it won’t matter how much air comes through the tube. He won’t be able to breathe anyway.

He has to risk letting go of the pen with his tied hands, and just holding it between his lips. It’s a balancing act, a terrible balancing act. He stands there, a little on tiptoes, the pen between his lips, drawing in air slowly and steadily, blowing it out again, his mind humming with dizziness, his lungs crying out for more air. But he lowers his hands and pushes them down through the hot plaster, feeling how thick it is becoming. It’s getting harder and harder to move, but he has to be able to move. He pushes the stuff away from his chest as he breathes in, filling his lungs as full as he can, making a barrel of his chest. As he exhales again he tries to keep the plaster from crowding back in.

Of course it comes back, though. How can he fight with his tied hands against this awful, sluggish, creeping stuff? He can feel the weight of it all around him, pressing every inch of him. He can feel its heat through his suit. The water has seeped into his clothes and he’s wet all through, and the plaster is clinging heavily to every inch of fabric. He can feel it pressing on his shoulders, pressing on his back, pressing on his legs. He tries to keep himself on tiptoes and tries to breathe and tries to keep pushing back that stiffening plaster and tries to keep the tube pointed up into the air. This could all fall apart with one moment of carelessness. He only has to waver in his position or lose his grip on the pen with his lips.

_Don’t panic. Take a few deep breaths._

He takes a moment from trying to push the plaster away. He can feel himself wavering on his tiptoes. He sticks his arms out straight in front of him, moving so slowly, like a man with no muscle strength at all. His fingers touch the ridged, warm metal of the vat’s side. His neck aches. He’s standing with his head tilted back and the plaster pressing around his throat, his feet pointed, his arms pushed out in front, holding himself up. He isn’t going to survive this. He can’t possibly survive this.

He lets his hands ease the strain on his legs for a bit, and then he moves them back slowly, and he feels the beat of panic, because it’s harder still to move his arms. The plaster is holding him now like the firmest of hugs, and maybe he doesn’t need to use his hands to hold himself up because he finds he can’t move his feet from their pointed position anyway. They are set hard in the plaster, and he can’t move. The stuff is so thick and heavy around his body, and it’s hot, hotter, so hot he can’t bear it.

_Don’t panic. Don’t panic._

He can feel the blood pulsing in his temples. He breathes slowly. The tube is still poking above the surface, and he breathes so slowly, forcing himself to take measured breaths. He keeps pushing at the stuff with his hands to make space around his chest, and now it’s hard enough, so wonderfully, terribly hard, that when he pushes it it stays. If only he could move his legs, perhaps he could somehow get himself to the surface. He tries to move one leg and his knee flexes a little, but his ankle and foot are set fast. He’s afraid of dislodging the pen, but then he realises that the pen is set fast, and he can’t move the angle of his head.

So that is that. He is fixed. He tries to move his hands again but they’re set, bent up in front of his chest, his fingers held in the stiffening plaster. He can’t bend his fingers. There’s just enough space in front of his body for breathing, but he can’t bend his fingers and he can’t move his hands up or down. He can’t move his head, can’t turn his neck. The stuff is a cast now, solid over his face, pressing over his eyelids, through his hair, stopping his nose, pressing against his lips. His only saviour is that pen that is stuck firmly now, one end clamped between his lips and the other above the surface of the plaster.

The panic comes over him like a crashing wave. Suddenly he can’t bear it. He can’t move. He’s entombed. He can breathe, but nothing more. Napoleon was hanging there just a few feet from him, before they dropped him. He might not even be alive by now. If Napoleon is dead then no one knows he’s here; no one who would lift a finger to save him. He’s entombed in plaster, a Pompeii victim set in stone.

His heart is banging against his ribs. It’s so hot that he can’t bear it. He can’t get enough air, and every inch of his body is burning. Every muscle wants to move. Adrenaline is coursing through him, like ants all through his body, urging him to flail, to fight, to run. But he can’t so much as twitch his fingers now. He stands there, suspended, almost, lips fixed around the pen, and he sucks in air. _Just a few deep breaths_. There isn’t such a thing as a deep breath, because he can’t get the air in fast enough, and his body wants him to breathe in, out, in, out in a snapping rhythm. He wants to scream. He hasn’t got enough air to make any kind of noise. He can’t even hum or moan with the panic. He just breathes in, slowly, slowly, drawing in that thread of air to fill his lungs, then out again, slowly, slowly, pushing the hard-won gas back out again.

Something reverberates through the plaster. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in here, breathing in and out, but it’s been silent the whole time. His ears are stoppered with plaster and there must be feet of plaster on all sides of him, and his panicked hell has been endured in utter silence. Now there’s something reverberating, hardly a sound so much as a vibration that his ears interpret as sound. His heart keeps thudding and he can hear the swoosh of his pulse in his head. He can feel that knocking. Bang. Bang. Bang. A little hope leaps.

It drags on and on. He stands there, frozen like a character in a terrible myth, like a creature turned to stone by the White Witch of Narnia. Images move dizzily through his mind. Pompeii casts. Statues. Men under Medusa’s gaze. Ammonites petrifying in sedimentary silt. He’s going to become a statue, a cast, a fossil. No matter how steadily he keeps breathing, he’s trapped in here, and he can’t move even a fingertip against the heated, pressing plaster. He can’t even weep because his eyes are firmly set in stone. He just draws in air and tries to control the increasing pulse of panic that his mind keeps setting loose in his limbs.

There is that banging reverberating through the plaster, and he’s sure, he thinks, that Napoleon is the source, that Napoleon is alive, that Napoleon is trying to reach him. But he is so powerless that it almost drives him mad. He needs to move. He needs to be able to breathe. The banging keeps shaking through the plaster but it doesn’t seem to be getting any closer, and those feelings of panic wax and wane, calming for a few minutes before surging again like a storm sweeping over him, so that he wants to scream and cry and can’t do a thing but stand in blind, motionless horror, sucking in air through that tube. It goes on and on, on and on, and he’s so hot he can’t bear it, the heat radiating through him, parching his throat and making his limbs throb.

And then – the knocking is so close now, so very close that it clatters into his ears and makes them ring. His head is circled with a tight, aching band. He can feel the banging now as a vibration that shudders through his skull, a regular crack, crack, crack, the ring of metal on metal. The air he sucks in is dusty and terrible and it makes him want to cough, but he can’t manage to get enough air to cough. The snapping clang keeps on and on, and suddenly there’s a stabbing pain on his scalp, and he can’t make a sound, but he knows that whoever has the tools has somehow slipped and caught his head. His head is free, some part of his head, enough to receive the sharp sting of a blow meant for solid plaster. He could cry with relief now, not with despair, even though his whole face is still masked with plaster, his whole body set in plaster.

He feels something softer touch that stinging bit of scalp, rubbing into his plaster-laden hair, and the human contact makes him want to weep. He hums a noise through the tube, and the finger touches him again, a slow and gentle rub against his scalp. Then the banging starts again, renewed in vigour.

He stands there, sweltering, unable even to sweat because his entire body is clenched in his wet clothes. The hammer keeps banging, bits of plaster are chipped away, and every now and then a hand touches the top of his head as more of it is exposed, and ruffles through his hair. It’s Napoleon. It must be. That affectionate touch is all Napoleon. He can’t see and he can hardly hear, but the touch is such a comfort.

Napoleon is getting closer to his face now. He must be concentrating all of his effort in freeing his face. His fingers are prising at the plaster. It must be that he doesn’t dare use the chisel so close to Illya’s face, so he’s prising it away, bit by bit, and he thanks his grandmother’s God again that the plaster is friable enough for that. Some of his forehead is exposed, and Napoleon’s hand strokes away dust, and a little coolness makes its way in. Then Napoleon is pulling the stuff away from his eyebrows, and the hairs stick and pull and hurt, but it’s a wonderful pain because it means he’s close to his eyes, that soon he will be able to see again.

That part of it is agony. Napoleon starts to peel away chunks and layers, and it pulls on his eyelids and his eyelashes are trapped in the solid stuff. Napoleon strokes a hand over his head and says something, but Illya can only feel the vibration and hear a muffled noise, not what he is saying. Then there is silence. No hand touching him. No banging. He stands, frozen, trying to reassure himself that it is all right. Napoleon hasn’t just walked away and left him. He hasn’t been ripped away by Cariago’s gang. That stroke over his head was a reassurance, so Napoleon will be back.

Then there he is, and something wet is touching him. Napoleon has a cool, wet cloth, and he is gently stroking the plaster away from over Illya’s eyes. He can see light through his eyelids at last. There’s a reddish glow coming through his eyelids, and Napoleon strokes with the cloth, and then he eases an eye open with his thumb, and Illya stares at last into the real world.

It is a wonderful moment. He had known it was Napoleon there, but it’s amazing to blink his stinging eye and see him. He’s kneeling on top of the half-destroyed surface of the set plaster. His clothes are whitened with plaster dust. Illya still can’t turn his head from its tilted back position, but he can see Napoleon and he can see the ceiling of the warehouse, and the chains dangling there that had been holding him until they dropped him into the vat. He would smile, if he could, but he’s still unable to move his face, still drawing in shallow breath after breath through that thin straw. If anything blocked the straw he would still die, even though he can see Napoleon, and light, and reality.

Napoleon smiles and says something, and ruffles his hair again. Plaster dust rises, and Illya blinks. He wants to look and look but he can’t keep his eye open for any length of time because the fine grit of the plaster keeps floating and settling.

Napoleon keeps chipping away. His other eye is free, and then his cheeks are being exposed. His ears are still covered but it’s getting easier to hear because more of the plaster has gone from around his head. Napoleon is working towards his nose and mouth. At last he’s delicately prising plugs of plaster from Illya’s nostrils, and suddenly he can breathe through more than a tube a quarter inch in diameter. God, he can breathe at last. The air stinks of plaster dust, but he sucks it in and then discovers how very little room his lungs have to expand. All that air is out there, but he can’t pull in a deep enough breath because his chest is still compressed by plaster. He’s still mute, just watching Napoleon mutely, and he wants to lament that he wants to breathe, that he still can’t breathe, but there’s nothing he can do.

Napoleon wipes his face with that wet cloth again, wiping over his eyes and cheeks and nose. The water is so beautifully cool for a few seconds, and then it starts to evaporate from his heat flushed face, and his skin tightens again with the remains of powder on it. Then Napoleon’s fingers are delicately picking at the plaster around his mouth, chipping down the length of the straw. Then his fingers are peeling away bits from his lips, and finally he can open his mouth, and, God, that is amazing, to be able to open his mouth and let the pen tube drop, and taste the air. He doesn’t speak. He just makes a noise, a noise that vibrates through his skull to his ears, a kind of long exhale of breath. Napoleon is saying something, but he’s muffled still and he can’t hear properly, and he says, ‘You’ll need to do something about my ears.’

His voice resonates oddly through his head, reminding him of how trapped he is. For a moment adrenaline surges again, pushing his limbs to move even though he cannot move, making him itch with the need to run. He can’t run, and he tries to stay calm, to stave off the awful claustrophobia. He just has to be patient, and wait. He makes himself take slow, shallow breaths. He tries to focus on the feelings in his body. He’s starting to notice the bruises now from the fight that went on before he was dropped in this vat. Now he can breathe more easily he is noticing the aching in his jaw and his abdomen from those punches. But his chest is still restricted in its movement, still banded around by that hot firmness. How he needs Napoleon to get him out of here.

Napoleon starts about his ears now, gradually getting them free, gradually exposing his whole head, so at last he can straighten it up and look at something more than an arc of high wall and ceiling. At last he can hear Napoleon when he talks.

‘Now, do _you_ want to talk to Mr Waverly, or shall I stop excavating for a bit?’ Napoleon asks him with a smile.

‘I’ll talk to Mr Waverly,’ he says. He can’t bear the thought of Napoleon stopping. ‘You carry on.’

‘You’re going to have to go to the hospital once you’re out,’ Napoleon tells him. ‘You must be in pretty bad shape.’

‘I’m all right,’ he says.

He can’t bear the thought of ending up trapped in hospital after this. He wants space. He wants room to breathe. His skin is stinging all over but all he wants is to be out of this prison, and in the open air. He needs Napoleon to keep chipping away at the plaster. He needs to be able to take just a few deep breaths.

  


((O))

  


The reaction comes out first in that decontamination chamber back at headquarters. It had seemed that the antidote to being trapped in slowly setting plaster was to ride a bomb through the blistering chill of air from a high altitude plane, wrestling the parachute onto his back, then setting all of his attention to trying to defuse the thing. The screaming wind of free fall had blown away that feeling of being entombed. He had been so close to death that every other feeling had been blown away. It had just been him and the cold metal of the bomb, him and the wind.

But then the vile nature of the bomb had been revealed, a terrible practical joke that was better than an A bomb, but terrible all the same. People on the ground had been killed by that plummeting dead weight of metal and the falling debris from the damage it caused, and he had been irradiated not with uranium, but with stench. It’s amazing how amusing people think that it is. It’s amazing how a building full of highly educated, intelligent people can laugh at someone for being infused with essence of skunk. It doesn’t matter that he thought he was saving Las Vegas from being levelled by a nuclear bomb. It doesn’t matter that he risked his life to ride that bomb, in a bizarre real life parody of Dr Strangelove, and used his frozen hands to remove the detonator before he saved himself. The joke of the day, the joke of the week, is that Illya Kuryakin stinks of skunk.

He stinks so badly that it’s hard to sleep. The doctor has given him sleeping pills to help him get through the nights – given them to him at arm’s length, trying not to let disgust show on his face. He stinks so badly that the men in the decontamination chamber have to wear masks, and their voices are muffled again, like when he was in that plaster vat.

Perhaps that’s what sets it off. Perhaps it’s the combination of the muffled voices and the heat of the steam and the confinement of the decontamination booth. Whatever it is, suddenly it feels as if his heart is about to explode, and his breath comes short, and his arms flail, thrashing at the sides of the booth, trying to get to the catch to open the door. Everything is muffled in there, his movements hidden by froth, his voice muffled by the sound of the spray. But it’s not something he can control, and he’s shouting, ‘Get out – I have to get out. Let me out of here!’

It takes them a moment to catch on, and then one of the masked men is opening the booth, reaching a hand to him as he bursts up out of the seat, soaking and steaming, naked but for his underpants, trying desperately to reach the door to the room. He has to get out of here. He’s having a heart attack, he’s sure, and he can’t breathe this thick, cloying air. He can’t breathe at all.

‘Whoa, there, Kuryakin,’ one of the suited men tells him, and he slaps his arm out at the hand that’s touching him. Perhaps he’s not even speaking English now, but he needs to get out of here because he’s going to die. God, he’s going to die –

He’s out in the corridor, dripping, a puddle around his feet, the smell of skunk rising in an uneasy mix with some kind of soapy scent like roses. Suddenly it’s cold, the air feels thinner, he’s shivering, and one of the men is out there, pulling off his mask, and he can see it’s Lawford, one of the lab technicians, a look of concern on his face.

‘Easy, Kuryakin,’ he says, holding out his open hands. ‘Illya. Hey, are you okay?’

His chest feels so tight, and he wants to explode out in all directions. This corridor is still too narrow. He wants real air, the air of outside, uncontaminated by steam or stench. But Lawford takes hold of his arm and starts hurrying him down the corridor into Medical, right into a doctor’s room. Illya sinks to sit on the flat black examination couch, dizzy and terrified.

He sits there, panting, as a doctor comes in, pulling his stethoscope from around his neck.

‘Now, Mr Kuryakin. Lord, the floor’s all over water. What on earth is going on?’

He presses a hand to his chest, feeling the thumping of his heart. His ribs feel as if they have become a size too small for his body. His heart seems to be cramping in his chest.

‘I think – I’m having a heart attack.’

How stupid. How stupid this is. But the doctor is listening to his heartbeat and someone comes into the room with a towel, and then he’s draped in the soft warmth, and he’s starting to feel as if he can catch his breath.

‘You’re not having a heart attack, Mr Kuryakin,’ the doctor assures him. ‘It just got a little close in the decontamination chamber, I think. Now, I’d like you to stay in for a little while and we’ll monitor you, but I think I can safely say you’re not having a heart attack.’

His face is crimson, he is sure. It’s ridiculous. He’s starting to feel as if he can breathe again.

‘I’d better go help clean out the chamber,’ Lawford mumbles, and leaves awkwardly, as if he’s embarrassed for Illya’s embarrassment, or at seeing a seasoned agent undone with utter panic.

‘I don’t need to stay in,’ Illya says. The embarrassment is taking over from that awful feeling, but it’s still there, running underneath. ‘Really. I feel all right now.’

The doctor puts a hand on his arm. ‘You’re staying in, Mr Kuryakin. You’ve been through a lot in the last few days. You’ve suffered chemical burns and a horrifying ordeal in that plaster. It’s best to be safe.’

  


((O))

  


He’s dreaming – what is he dreaming? It’s a muddled something, something about being wrapped around with plastic cords so he can’t move, about being wrapped in hot, stinking bandages by that simpering old man until his whole body is encased. But then the vat of embalming fluid has become a vat of plaster, and the man is lifting slopping handfuls, slapping the awful stuff over the bandages as if he’s been broken and needs a full body cast. He can feel the rigidity seeping through his body. First his legs can’t move, and then his arms, and then his chest is encased, and then – God, that man is slapping the stuff over his face, and it slops over his mouth, and it’s starting to set, and –

He wakes suddenly, gasping, clawing at bedsheets and staring wildly. It’s bright in the room, all the lights on, and he recognises one of the Infirmary ward rooms. He hadn’t known he had fallen asleep. It had been so boring lying on the bed with monitor patches on his chest, and it had been warm, and a great tiredness had come over him after the panic wore off. So he had fallen asleep, and – Here he is now, lying bare-chested in bed, no more than a sheet over him, and the ECG machine is diligently transcribing his heartbeats onto a scroll of paper. There’s a ragged spike, he can see, inked out just now when he woke from that dream.

‘How are you doing, partner?’

He starts and looks to his right. He hadn’t realised he wasn’t alone, but Napoleon is there, sitting in the chair by the bed.

‘Long day, huh?’

‘At least I’m smelling like roses,’ Illya murmurs, because that rose scent is still mixing oddly with essence of skunk.

‘Among other things,’ Napoleon says meaningfully.

‘There isn’t much I can do about that,’ Illya retorts. He feels ridiculously sensitive about it. It’s so wearisome to be the butt of everyone’s jokes when he feels as tired as this.

‘So, you had a bit of a moment in the decontamination tank?’ Napoleon asks him, and Illya grimaces.

‘Something like that. I don’t know what it was. Just – suddenly I couldn’t bear the confinement. I don’t understand why – ’

‘Illya, a few days ago you were dropped into a vat of setting plaster,’ Napoleon says gently, his voice entirely serious. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how horrific that was. It was hard enough from the outside.’

‘So then I – what – had some kind of breakdown in the decontamination booth?’ Illya asks. He feels disgusted with himself. If only he’d realised perhaps he could have calmed himself down. Perhaps no one would ever have known.

‘Better than having a heart attack,’ Napoleon reminds him. ‘Which, by the way, you definitely didn’t have. I was looking at the ECG with the doctor while you were sleeping like a baby. It’s completely normal.’

‘It is better,’ Illya acknowledges, but still, he feels so stupid.

‘A little claustrophobia isn’t entirely unexpected,’ Napoleon tells him, laying a hand on his arm.

Illya is reminded of that touch on his head when he was just emerging from the plaster. He’s got a number of cuts and bruises from the process of being extracted from that awful stuff, but it’s the gentle touches that he remembers most strongly; that feeling of being connected again to another human being after being so terribly cut off. It’s the same touch he remembers after he was made into a living mummy by Kavon, when Napoleon gently peeled the bandages away from his skin. But the thought of that makes him remember the claustrophobic horror of being trapped like that, and his heart starts to speed. That traitorous ink nib starts to trace the faster beats on the paper so that Napoleon can see.

‘I don’t – think I want to go back into decontamination,’ Illya says very seriously.

Napoleon eyes him, then leans over and delicately sniffs his hair.

‘A sweeter rose has never bloomed,’ he says.

Illya laughs. He feels ridiculously tired, but it’s so good to have Napoleon and his irreverent comments to bring him back down to earth.

‘I can smell myself, Napoleon. Don’t pretend you can’t smell it.’

Napoleon shrugs. ‘Well, yes, I can smell it, but roses cover a lot of sins. Maybe another session will do it, and then you’ll be ripe for releasing back into society. I know a charming little restaurant over in Brooklyn with a roof terrace. Plenty of fresh air, no confining walls, and they make the best Greek food outside of Athens. Sound good?’

It sounds good, but –

‘I thought I was having a heart attack in that booth,’ Illya says.

Napoleon pats him on the shoulder.

‘I’ll come in with you,’ he says. ‘I’ll sit in the booth next to you, if you like. I can – Hmm, I can’t read to you with all that water around. I’ll tell you about the opening night with Ginger baby and what she said to Sophia Loren.’

Illya’s eyes widen. ‘Sophia Loren came to the premiere of a dog like that?’

Napoleon leans closer, his tone confidential. ‘Ginger baby complimented her on her performance in _The Big Sleep_. She said she expected her to look older now, but she didn’t look a day over forty.’

‘ _The Big Sleep_ ,’ Illya repeats. He furrows his forehead, thinking. ‘1946. Lauren Bacall, wasn’t it?’

Napoleon grins. ‘That’s the one.’

‘Well, you’ve told me now,’ Illya grumbles. ‘There’s nothing left for you to tell me in the decontamination booth.’

Napoleon’s grin widens, and Illya feels an irresistible warmth.

‘That’s nothing to what went on at the after-show party. Miss Loren came back to that, too. You get in that booth, and I’ll tell you the lot. Then I’ll take you to that little restaurant. Good food, a little too much to drink, a cab home. I’ll open up all the windows, a lot of fresh air, not a hint of confinement.’

Illya rests his head on the pillow and looks at the ceiling. He doesn’t need to be in bed at all. He could rip off the monitoring equipment and leave right now, if it weren’t for the wrath of the doctors and the fact that they’d probably report him to Waverly. But maybe if he can get back in that booth and stay calm until the end of the process, he can be free of it all. Free of the smell of skunk. Free of the smell of roses, which is starting to get sickly beyond bearing. Free of the awful claustrophobia for a little while. That’s something he will have to work on, he thinks. It won’t go away in a day and a night. But dinner at that restaurant sounds very good; and he wants to hear what happened with Sophia Loren.

  



End file.
